INDIAN LABOUR HISTORIOGRAPHY, 5 They also maintained that they had every moral right to extend support to workers in their just fight against unjust oppression and exploitation. The logical corollary to the above difference of views would therefore be for the first group to refute spontaneity and the second group to support it. This newly coined category 'outsider' was subsequently to become a highly controversial issue. Widespread labour unrest in the industrial belts and even inside the urban zones proper, extension of the horizon of and-imperialist movement, reports and evidence of various labour enquiry committees all these gradually began to create an urge to study labour questions and it is from this period that serious attempts were made to study and publish history of industrial labour in India. Even a few labour journals dealing exclusively with labour problems of the day. were also started in the early twenties. Naturally different writers put different emphasis on different aspects of this history, me emphasis depending on the writer's own world view, especially vis-a-vis the labour-capital relationship. It is not my purpose here to present a bibliography of labour history but mention must be made ofGandhi's writings in connection with the Ahmedabad textile labour strike ot 1918, B.P. Wadia's various speeches and writings in connection with the Buckingham Textile Mill workers' strike (1918) and of two books written by Rajani Kanta Das, Factory Labour in India and Labour Movement in India, both of which were published in 1923. The report of the Royal Comission on Labour (1931) along with eleven evidence volumes—probably the most comprehensive report ever made on Indian industrial labour—may be considered to be the next important landmark from the viewpoint of source material and, as we shall see presently, it was followed by the publication of a number of books on labour history. We cannot here to go into the circumstances that led to the setting up of this Commission (1929). But it should be remembered that during the course of the decade beginning with widespread labour unrest and followed immediately by the Non-Co-operation movement, the labour movement was marching forward. Its cause was being championed by leaders of various schools of political thought, both inside and outside the legislatures (central and provincial). Due to these agitations the government was forced to concede some of the basic demands of labour : repeal of some of the earlier anti-labour (penal) legislations like Workmen's Breach of Contract Act (1925), abolition of the Indenture system of labour (1915) etc., and passing of some relatively progressive acts like Workman's Compensation Act (1923), Trade Union Act (1926), etc. Moreover, by the time the Royal Commission was set up, Indian Communists had organised themselves into a strong political force and made such a dent into the world of labour that they constituted a dominant force in the only central labour organisation,-the A.I.T.U.C. (formed in 1920). This was the result of the leading role they played in organising workers both before and during the next spurt of labour movement (1926-29). As is well known, the communists began to propagate a new ideology through their work among the workers. For the first time, the concept of class and class struggle became an important item of debate and discussion in the trade unions. By this time, trade unions and trade union activities had increased rapidly. Simultaneously ideological clashes and conflicts inside labour organisations also became a significant feature. The Central Point of Debate So far as trade union activities vis-a-vis labour movements were concerned, the central point of debate related to the role and goal of the labour movement: whether labour organisations should keep away from politics and fight only torworkes, specitic